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I turned out this morning to assess a promotion candidate recently accepted on to the County accelerated programme, meaning he is being given the opportunity to progress from Level 7 to Level 5 in one marking season. He has some exacting criteria to fulfil but if he completes them all, then he may well be eligible to be considered for the County Fitness Test and possibly nomination for Level 4. That however is a long way from today when he lost his coin during his warm up. That set me thinking, when we take to the field, why do we need so many of everything? When tutoring new referees I run through the checklist of equipment every referee needs when stepping out on to the field to referee a game. S/he needs ... Two whistles - in...

Some readers may think, well it's just a Sunday League game, but for the players who have worked all week, looking forward to their game at the weekend, it does matter. I have been guilty in the past for refereeing when not at my best. I'm not talking about refereeing with an injury or a below peak (for my age) fitness, I'm talking about when I'm not mentally focused. The mental side of the game often needs as much attention as the physical. Every game deserves you at your best, mentally and physically, but in truth unless you are at the very top of the game AND very lucky, you will always be carrying a niggle into a game. Mentally, it might be that you haven't done your homework, it might be the thought of last week's game when you...

Another case for goal line technology Filed under: Football, Laws of the Game, Premier League, soccer Continue reading...

Premier League referee Peter Walton will be moving to the US next month to take up a position working with the MLS. The MLS Officials do get a lot of grief (sometimes valid) however there has been a drive in the US to try and rule out some of the rough play during games. I have though had the impression that the MLS are quite good at being public about their efforts to work with the officials. For a few years there used to be a weekly podcast where they would talk about key incidents during the week and were not afraid to be critical of officials. Filed under: Uncategorized Continue reading...

Just came across this video on 101 Great Goals. It compares the Maradona goal for Argentina in 86 against England against a Messi goal against Gettafe. Filed under: Uncategorized Continue reading...

This weekends football passed me by due to the little one being ill. So ive just been catching up and completely forgot that it was the IFAB meeting. FIFA have recommend that Hawk Eye and GoalRef continue the test phase on goal line technology. Hawk Eye is a well known system that uses cameras. Where as GoalRef uses a magnetic system and a special ball. Given there has been two incidents recently in Spain & Italy it shows there is a need to look at this in more depth. My only concern is it will split the game further between the have and have nots The other changes that were approved. Clarification around position of advertising boarding Players sock tape has to be the same colour as the sock Clarification around what should...

During an amateur game in Belgium the Referee judged that one of the players during this aerial dived. Im not sure how he worked that out and I do wonder if there was something else thats not reported in the clip. Anyway, the player who was cautioned and then dismissed went to Hospital and had 3 displaced vertebrae! Seen via offthepost.info Filed under: Uncategorized Continue reading...

Assessing today and a few shots Filed under: Uncategorized Continue reading...

This week has been a odd week. I’ve spent the best part of it manually configuring our new android smartphones for work. Fun when it’s yours not when it’s someone else’s. So I’ll be glad to get out tomorrow when I’ll be assessing. It’s my first one of the new marking season and using the new forms for this level. Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: assessments, Football, referee, soccer Continue reading...

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: assessments, Football, referee, soccer Continue reading...

So as mentioned last week the blog was going to move to a new service provider. That has now happened and so you may need to update your RSS Feed etc. Filed under: Uncategorized Continue reading...

If your lucky you may have a cup semi or final or big league game coming up. You may also have the luxury of having qualified assistant referees working with you. The catch to this if your not used to it, you may not make the most of this opportunity. Over on Referee-Inactive there is a great post on how to handle this situation and get the most from it. Link to Post Filed under: Referee, Uncategorized Tagged: Assistant referee (association football), referee Continue reading...

‘Referees in the media’ will be published at the beginning of the week on the Dutch Referee Blog and provides remarkable or interesting quotes and links to articles worth reading. Every boy dreams of walking onto the hallowed turf of Hampden and I have now had the great privilege and honour of fulfilling this dream. Scottish Assistant Referee Charlie Smith blogs about his experiences as cup final AR. He blogs about the week before the final from the moment he heard hewould be there. “That’s absolutely ludicrous, trying to protect the poor performances of the officials they supply us. It’s a joke.” Mark Hughes laughs at the British FA because it released a statement that it is in favour of the use of technology when the match QPR –...

Next week the blog will be moving to a new provider. If you to www.the-referee.com then everything will work as normal. However you will need to update your RSS Feed. I suggest bookmark www.the-referee.com and all being well between on Wednesday next week the blog will have moved. I am currently tidying up the posts after the move and tidying up the layout. There wont be anything else posted on this site now. Continue reading...

Dutch education institute LOI has made several tv commercials about people getting smarter. Their newest main character: the referee team. A short explanation for the non-Dutch readers of the blog (they could just click the video below). An example of a previous commercial: LOI has published tv ads with Dutch people on vacation in Italy, where employees of a restaurant are making fun of them. The father strikes back in fluent Italian that the ‘pasta clowns’ should stop and bring them some food. The idea is that LOI makes the Dutch smarter due to their courses. The referee commercial is also in Dutch, but hope this short explanation helps. The refereeing trio is walking off the pitch for half-time, discussing what players and coaches...

If you follow me on twitter then you will know this from a few weeks ago. If not a couple of weeks ago I got confirmation from The FA that I am now a level 1 FA Tutor. This means I can now work on the courses for new referees. It's a big learning curve and I've now worked on four different courses. The FA take a lot of stick but areas like this do t get covered by the press as positive news is boring. When I passes in 93 it was an over head projector, one video tape and the instructor smoked a pipe. The day of a two day course i worked one the other week was more than 50% on a football pitch with a 45 minute video session on advantage. This was only reduced as we ha to do a session on report writing which has to be classroom and a bit...

Something new on the blog: In the dressing room. This time with photo’s of the referee’s dressing room in Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium. Had some ideas about photo’s of different dressing rooms on the blog, but don’t know if people would like it if I only post them from changing rooms I visit (Send me your pictures if you have them!). That’s when I found out Constant Onstenk, secretary of the board of the Referee Association of Arnhem (city in the eastern part of Holland), visited the Emirates Stadium with his wife and posted some of here photo’s in the local referee magazine. He wrote that the dressing rooms were locked, but he could enter them after he asked politely. It’s actually a referee area, with three different rooms: a dressing...

On Saturday 7th March 2012, I was appointed for my first game in charge of a ‘real-life’ football match – the boy became a man, refereeing (of a local league Division 4 game) became a reality… In the interests of fair play and, probably more importantly, in an attempt to avoid sounding boring, this blog was never intended to provide a minute by minute post-mortem of a match or individually name teams/players that I take charge of on a Saturday afternoon. A short summary and mention of any contentious decisions is more than enough, so here we go… Overall, considering this was my first game, I thought things went rather well (I would say that, I’m a referee now) and I enjoyed being out on a football pitch for the first time in 20 years as...

Just got photo’s in my inbox from the bombing of the bakery of Greek international referee Petros Konstantineas. About two weeks ago an unknown person has put a bomb in an oven in Konstantineas’ store. Because he was late at work, starting at 1am, he wasn’t injured. The case is still under police investigation. Source of photo’s: http://www.refereepress.blogspot.com/ Continue reading...

Asian top referee Ravshan Irmatov talks about his tactical approach of matches. See more recent referee video’s on the Asian Football Conferation’s YouTube Channel. - AFC Elite Referee Instructor, Shamsul Maidin on AFC’s Referee Development Program. - Benjamin Jon Williams with an advice for young referees. - AFC Elite Referee Instructor Ali Traifi explains the selection process for AFC Project Future Referees. - AFC Elite Referee Fitness Instructor, Utsumi Toshio speaks about the importance of physical fitness in modern day refereeing. Dutch Referee Blog has spoken with Ravshan Irmatov form Uzbekistan during 2010′s World Cup in South-Africa. Read the article here. Ravshan Irmatov Continue reading...